Category Archives: Education

Given the wealth of options, Course Choice has the potential to deeply impact student achievement at all grade levels, as well as provide for the career and college readiness of our student population.

Like New Orleans, Jefferson’s reforms are now bearing fruit. And like New Orleans, Jefferson benefits from leadership that places students above special interests. Here are five reasons why approving a new CBA would stymie momentum and risk recent gains.

With the Louisiana legislature now in session, this is an opportune time to apply some lessons from Margaret Thatcher to what may be the most important public policy issue facing our state: education reform.

Act 2 moved Louisiana forward from an anachronistic model of education into a student-centric one that allows each child to master her learning before she moves on to another concept. It is an important model for the nation that puts the emphasis on learning outcomes and student success.

Louisiana’s public schools put themselves in a precarious position by hiring more teachers and administrative personnel, even while the number of students declined. Generous pension and benefit plans have exacerbated this problem.

Teacher union challenges to real education reform continue to exist, though often in ways that are not measurable or reportable. If you dig deeper, the unions’ power and influence, particularly at the local school district level, remain strong in this state, challenging education reform efforts at every step of the electoral, legislative and policy implementation processes.

The report provides information and data about scholarship students, scholarship schools and scholarship savings. The report also provides a timeline of implementation since the landmark legislation was signed into law by Governor Bobby Jindal earlier this year.

It is no surprise that this policy comes out of Louisiana, a state that has led the way in school choice innovation. Most notably, Louisiana is home to the Recovery School District (RSD), which was created following Hurricane Katrina. The disaster was used as an opportunity to reinvent the traditional school district in New Orleans.

The new system of evaluating teacher effectiveness often includes “value-added” data that measures the extra value a teacher adds to a student’s standardized test score. Value-added data offers an objective measure of teacher effectiveness that did not previously exist.